Last Orders At The One Tree Hotel

about

'The recordings on the Last Orders at the One Tree Hotel EP date from 2001, and it is a companion piece to the A Drifting Population CD. "A Thousand Years on the One Tree Plain (Parts I-V)" is a meditation on landscape and eternity; guitar, vocal and echoplex effects wielded with focus and purpose. For anyone who has driven from Adelaide to Sydney across the great nothingness of the Australian interior, Colohan's sonic mapping of the desolate Hay Plain in this work will resonate deeply. An odd omission from A Drifting Population, "A Thousand Years..." is arguably the strongest work to come out of those recordings. The title track evokes the abandoned hotel in question and its setting of red dirt and spinifex perfectly. Finishing off the EP, "Saw You There in Land and Weather" again brings Roy Montgomery to mind.' Tony Dale, Deep Water Acres.

'Last Orders At The One Tree Hotel' is even more stark. Acoustic and electric guitars plus effects were played live back in 2001 in the empty hotel of the set's title on a dying four track tape. I am thankful the performance was captured for us. It is melodic and extremely enjoyable, yet it feels like we are listening into the decay of the hotel, the emptiness shaping the music. Analogue electronics like voices from the ether unsettlingly speak through the music as the listener is gradually drawn to the empty hotel.' Mark Coyle, Harvest Home.

credits

released November 22, 2006

'The One Tree Hotel, halfway between Hay & Booligal, was built in 1862 by Alexander Finch & served as a staging change for Cobb & Co. until 1914. It was destroyed by fire in 1903 & rebuilt in the original style & materials. The license was relinquished in 1942. So when I turned up in February 2001 with my fellow roving farmhands Steve & Carol in search of a beer & maybe a roof for the night, we were shit out of luck. As far as the eye could see, a heathaze distorted plain of spinifex & reddish-brown dirt spread on past the horizon. Emus moved in packs like desert caravans. The One Tree Hotel was home only to ghosts, snakes & empty bottles. With dusk coming down, Steve said 'we'll make Hay while the sun shines' & we drove the long miles back to town. This short recording, a companion piece to a Drifting Population, is my attempt to recapture that journey across an empty plain to wander through the rooms of a long abandoned hotel.' David Colohan, November 2006.

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Agitated Radio PilotIreland

'Colohan seems to have a preternatural sense of the elemental, those dark places we all go to take off our disguises. So
many artists have treaded this ground before and seemed insincere, but Colohan's vulnerability, his human voice that presents these unadorned truths without spin or motive, makes me want to listen and believe.' Foxy Digitalis...more